Americans' Relationship With Cinco De Mayo: It's Complicated

AUSTIN, TX — First, let's get this out of the way: Cinco de Mayo has nothing to do with mayonnaise. Plus, it's pronounced maw-yo, not may-oh.

Also important to note is that the holiday doesn't commemorate Mexican Independence Day, but a remembrance of Mexico's triumph over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862 — half a century after Mexican Independence Day, celebrated on Sept. 16, commonly referred to as diez y seis.

"The significance of Cinco de Mayo is that it represents Mexican resistance to foreign intervention; it is a moment where Mexico as a young nation rallied to defend itself," Raul Ramos, associate professor of history at the University of Houston, told NBC News. "But it was not a struggle for independence. Instead it represented a struggle against imperialism."

The added significance of the battle was that it resulted in a national unity, helping disparate regional differences galvanize in forming a shared Mexican identity.

"The Battle of Puebla helped the country coalesce around the idea of a unified Mexican identity," Ramos said.

After dispatching Spanish forces 50 years before, Mexico had to contend with the French. Napoleon III yearned to install a permanent French monarchy in Mexico.

In ousting the formidable French forces, the Mexicans were able to achieve an implausible victory — a triumph that that resonates powerfully to this day.

"The French army was considered the best army in the world at the time, and they had not been defeated in decades," Professor Margarita Sánchez of Wagner College told NBC News. "So this was a real David-versus-Goliath situation that inspired Mexicans at home and in the U.S."

Yet, ironically, Cinco de Mayo is celebrated more in the U.S. today than it is in Mexico.

"Recent Mexican immigrants are often surprised at what a huge thing Cinco de Mayo has become here," Sánchez told NBC News. "They do celebrate the holiday in Mexico, but it is only a big deal in Puebla."

The real celebration south of the border comes during Diez y Seis — or the 16th (of September) — when throngs gather to celebrate Mexican independence. The nation's president appears each year in the nation's capital for "el grito," which involves beckoning the crowd to respond to his shouts of "Viva Mexico!"

It's quite a spectacle, powerful enough to stir the patriotic stirrings of even Mexican Americans several generations removed from the mother country.

But as widely celebrated Cinco de Mayo is in the U.S., it's not always feted for the right reasons. The holiday has been appropriated as a day to drink to oblivion and binge on Mexican food — and worse, sometimes dress up in anachronistic garb centered on sombreros and serapes — with only a peripheral understanding as to the day's significance.

It's little wonder, then, that the holiday has been colloquially re-branded in some circles to Cinco de Drinko and Gringo de Mayo.

"It's done with a note of reduction to negative stereotypes of people," Trinidad Gonzales, a history instructor at South Texas College in McAllen, Texas, told Patch in a telephone interview. "It's a celebration that's been co-opted for commercial purposes."

Think beer and margarita sales, for instance, or sales of Mexican or Tex-Mex food. Such reductions are inevitable, Gonzales noted, summoning even the Fourth of July as another holiday quickly losing its significance as the day gives way to tactics of recreation and mattress sales rather than one imbued with patriotic reverence.

But the appropriation of Cinco de Mayo has even darker undertones, yielding tacit approval for some revelers to perpetuate cultural stereotypes while in the throes of celebration.

We've all seen people donning sombreros and fake mustaches on this day each year — a nod to the holiday in their minds, but a perpetuation of stereotypes that is culturally offensive to many.

"Cinco de Mayo has definitely been appropriated to provide cover for making fun of a population," Gonzales said. "'Well, we're just celebrating your heritage,' they'll say. No, you're mocking our heritage."

The annual celebration also sometimes gives way to political pandering. Then the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump in 2016 posted a picture of himself on social media enjoying Mexican food, seemingly as a way to ingratiate himself with a powerful Latino voting bloc — while managing to push his personal brand simultaneously.

"Happy Cinco de Mayo!" Trump — who launched his presidential campaign calling Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers — wrote as a caption to his picture. "The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!"

That tweet didn't go over well with Latinos. But former Arkansas governor Mike Hukabee outdid his party's leader this year, with a seemingly mocking tweet about how he plans to personally celebrate Cinco de Mayo: "For Cinco de Mayo I will drink an entire jar of hot salsa and watch old Speedy Gonzales cartoons and speak Spanish all day. Happy CdMayo!"

That tweet has sparked a social media firestorm of criticism. Younger readers, particularly Millennials, might be unfamiliar with the anachronistic Looney Tunes cartoon Speedy Gonzales—a sombrero-wearing, thickly accented rodent fond of yelling "Arriba! Arriba!" as he escapes capture from predators. The cartoon is from a different time, but often trotted out to perpetuate ugly, cultural stereotypes.

You can Google or YouTube it to see for yourself. As offensive as that character is, Hanna-Barbera later introduced a counterpart to the then-popular cartoon mouse: Slow Poke Rodriguez. Don't even get us started on Slow Poke Rodriguez (again, you can search for that yourself if it's of anthropological interest.

Beyond the tactic to offend or voice disdain, Huckabee's tweet also yields a useful primer in the present context of how not to react to a holiday celebrating another culture's heritage.

Closer to home, a "Cinco de Drinko" party at Baylor University, a private Baptist college in Waco, Texas, also yields a lesson in how not to honor the observance. According to a Dallas Morning News report, party-goers donned costumes dressed as maids and construction crews as part of the gathering's theme in the days leading up to this year's observance. According to local reports, some of those attending also chanted "Build that wall!" in reference ot Trump's vision of having a wall built along the U.S.-Mexico border to curb immigration.

Gonzales, the history teacher, notes the irony of such approaches to commemorate the Cinco de Mayo observance given the interwoven links the Battle of Puebla has to our own national history. In addition to wanting to install a monarchy in Mexico, the French also sought to create a foothold — and more accessible trade zone, if you will — to aid the Confederacy in selling its cotton.

The Union forces had blocked the sale of the commodity, which was as prized as oil is today. The French also wanted access to the product, and establishing a presence in Mexico would provide easier trade routes into the southern country than the underground routes cotton traders were forced to take in exporting the product in the height of civil war, the professor said.

"If the French took over, they had a link to the Confederacy," Gonzales said. "Cotton was one of the primary resources for everyone. It's like oil today, it fuels the economy."

The erosion of that budding French-Confederacy relationship contributed to the dissolution of slavery to ensure the cotton trade, in effect. It was during this time that Abraham Lincoln and Mexican President Benito Juarez strengthened their relationship through correspondence in highlighting their shared ideals, Gonzales said.

"What the Mexicans were saying to the Americans is, 'We embrace the same democratic values like you, like the pursuit of happiness. We're like you, we fought for the same values you support as Americans as well. We just happen to be Mexican.'"

After all, both countries fought against monarchies intent on imperialism, holding firm to their democratic ideals.

This should be the prism through which Cinco de Mayo is celebrated, Gonzales agreed. Both with undertones of reverence for the lost lives in the name of democratic ideals but also given inextricable ties that day in Puebla had for our own country's destiny.

"I think we should continue to celebrate it," Gonzales said. "What we need to do is be more engaged in the maintaining a broader awareness of the significance of it."

But it's not always easy. Cinco de Mayo — and its attendant alcohol-fueled revelry — has taken on a life of its own. But it's an awareness worth raising, Gonzales said.

"That is a struggle we should not give up on," he said. "It's an awareness we need to continue to engage in because we should be proud of celebrating our heritage."

So, by all means, celebrate Cinco de Mayo tonight. But it's probably best that you leave the sombreros and fake droopy mustaches at home.

— Images via WikiMedia Commons and Facebook